powderfinger

Were has anyone here said to open up “life as usual”? Nobody is suggesting to go back to normal with no safeguards. This level of lockdown doesn’t make sense in western PA. Let us open up more stuff and see what happens. If we see a severe uptick then lock it down again.  Wear masks, try to keep away from close contact, use common sense. 

When this whole business started, what were we told by Dr. Fauci and all the doctors?? Flatten the curve! And why do this? So our healthcare system doesn't get overrun. NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING in their initial comments about this said anything about reducing deaths. Even Gov. Cuomo in one of his first pressers gave a condescending talk about what flattening the curve meant with infantile pictures of a wave crashing into a hospital.

When you flatten a curve, you don't reduce the number of instances, you just spread them over a longer period.

Well, we've done what they asked and still they ask for more. Hospitals are not being overrun. Yes, some places are hit harder, but people aren't waiting in hallways to get put on vents.

It's getting ridiculous and people are already starting to move about more. I know this virus isn't the flu, I get it can be serious, especially for people at risk. Some people will act like idiots when we open back up, but the vast majority will be careful, wear masks, social distance, etc, etc.

The economic impact is obviously a disaster. But so too is the fact that people aren't able to get routine screening for problems they are having. My wife had her regular mammogram that had been scheduled for April moved until August. I'm sorry, that's 4 months she has to wait....what if something could have been caught now, does her life not matter too? And what, did people all of a sudden stop having heart attacks and strokes? Because everything you read says the numbers coming into the hospitals are way down.

It's time to open things back up....cautiously!

6 minutes ago, Eddie Shore said:

So, this delay brings up an interesting question for me.  If kids are not allowed on the ice for camps or to play spring hockey, and all kids will have to tryout "cold".  Will this have an affect on who get chosen?  I know when my kid was playing, he needed a week or two at "game speed" to get back in the groove of things, which is why I always thought that tryouts in early spring benefitted him.  If they have some sort of abbreviated tryouts in August after being off the ice for 5 months, I think he would look worse than normal.

Thoughts?

I had the same thought, however, since every kid would be in the same boat, it should even out. What I think will make a bigger difference is that you will see which kids have used this time to work out and try to stay in shape vs. those that sat around playing video games the entire time.

I've always thought tryouts shouldn't be held until August anyway. I get the reasons why they aren't, but kids change so fast over just a couple months that it really does make more sense to have them later.

Delmont (center Ice) has a Livebarn feed.

7 minutes ago, dazedandconfused said:

There must be something happening there that they don't want to be known considering  they still have last season's rosters on their website for the 18, 16 and 15 teams.

No dog in this fight but this is not true, they have updated rosters for all teams for 2019-20.

I get parents are a huge problem. However, call me naive but, people claiming these coaches that got suspended for a year simply because a parent complained? Come on, I have to believe that these matters are taken seriously and that a suspension of that magnitude isn't going to be given out just because some parent doesn't like the fact their kid isn't getting playing time. 

To be fair to the refs, they weren't exactly give a lot of time to learn about these new "guidelines". On top of that, if you watch USA Hockey's official video about said guidelines, you are often left scratching your head as the examples they show don't match the rule they are talking about.

Unfortunately, it's going to be very inconsistent from game to game.

Been involved in four 16U scrimmages/placement games so far and I have to say the officiating has been quite good. Parents have been well behaved as well. It's pretty refreshing actually. A small sample I know, fingers crossed it will last. 

10 minutes ago, Gilmore Tuttle said:

So when are preseason games officially over and when does PAHL make placements?

Placements should come out this week. If teams want to appeal, they have this weekend to schedule additional games to provide proof in appeal process.

2 hours ago, Mysonisagoalie said:

The PIHL website has a whole section about the SMFF. Click on the events tab and it is at the bottom of the drop down menu.

Yeah, they updated it long after the games were over. On Wednesday they didn’t even have results from all the pool games listed yet even though the playoffs were that night. They finally got around to updating it sometime late yesterday. 

The point is, maybe they should have promoted it a bit better.

All of this is absolutely true about youth hockey and statistics.

Glossing over the fact that the original comment was that the PIHL can't even give some attention on their website, Twitter feed or Facebook, to a tournament that essentially is the kickoff to their season.

How hard would it have been for them to update these things with current SCORES, forget individual stats??

BurghHockey.com was updating twitter in real-time....nobody from PIHL could do the same?

5 hours ago, rock said:

this weekend, i heard  that 38 middle school teams folded this year because of this rule. i have not fact checked that, i do not know the schools or the locations, but it came from a boards president. i tried finding a list of teams last year but i couldn't find standings anywhere seems that pihl site does not let you look back at past years.. i counted 39 teams this year.  not even sure if that 38 teams is all pihl.. just passing along info i heard. 

 

Just looked at old PointStreak site from 2017-18, there were 58 MS teams then.

31 minutes ago, fafa fohi said:

You can start here, then click on USA Boys and filter as needed for the age group you want in Tier 2.  There will be some shifting in the alignments after placement games are completed.

https://myhockeyrankings.com/division_info.php?y=2019&d=318

I think this is what he's looking for...

PRESEASON 1920 Groups_Game Slotting 12U_14U_16U_18U.xlsx

Because most of the board (since changed) didn’t have players in that birth year?

QV has never had a JV team. On their website they list a roster for MS so that leads one to wonder if they just went independent instead of being in PIHL.

Looks like Hampton has no JV team this season which seems to make sense since they graduated a ton and had low MS numbers last year.

52 minutes ago, sample39 said:

USA Hockey is the main governing body that oversees hockey across the country.  Under USA Hockey, you have different Districts/Affiliates such as Atlantic, Central, and in our case - Mid-American (MidAm).  Under the Districts, you have leagues that fall within their supervised areas, such as the PIHL and PAHL in our area.  Individual leagues have their own rules, but also must adhere to rules set by their district, as well as the standard USA Hockey rules.

To be clear though, this 25% rule is not a USA Hockey rule, this is strictly Mid-Am doing this. Other districts do not implement this policy.  We had families recently move in from other districts that couldn't believe there was such a rule because we were unable to take their 2007 because we had hit the limit....we will have a short bench because of this and next year, maybe no team at all in PIHL.

PAHL AA is beneath them but PIHL is not?? Seems like an odd conclusion for them to come to.

Didn't make huge improvements??? You couldn't even drink the water there before MF and DW bought the place.

Complain about them all you want, but if those guys hadn't stepped in there would be one less rink in WPa today.

4 hours ago, PuckHead7 said:

Is anyone really up to the challenge?  What does it mean to be in charge of a youth sports club?  Do volunteers board members do all that they can, putting 100% into their job?  Do parents of player do all that they can to support the club?  Blaming Midam isn’t the answer!  Yes, I disagree with the 25/75 (the rule should have stayed at 40%)..... but...

Maybe there’s a need to work a bit harder with recruitment??  My son graduated from an organization that only fielded a half full JV team and a half full MS team a few short seasons ago.  The current president and the board worked their asses off and now the organization has a fairly large Devo group, a Middle School team and a Varsity team.  The district is small!  There is no way they can field both a JV team and a Varsity team.  Point is, they worked their asses off to get the club into this wonderful position.  Growing the program from about 25 kids to about 45 now.  Their Devo group is their FUTURE.  Get them in now, keep them learning and happy and maybe they’ll play through 12th grade.

This is great, a development program is a great way to get the kids into the program. However, not all programs have the volunteers or the resources to do this and rely on the middle school program to be the developmental program. After all, that's what Mid-Am claims, that MS should be developmental and then proceeds to hamper programs that are trying to develop by limiting the number of younger players. 

I'm not exactly sure why Mid-Am has made this rule. Dropping it from 9 players to 25% of the total roster is a pretty dramatic change. Maybe this is their way of getting leagues like PIHL to drop the MS level and just have MS be truly developmental only?

56 minutes ago, AAAAleaguestarter said:

Mid am rule is that only 25% of your final roster is allowed to be 2007 birth year including goalies. It's hurting a lot of teams this year 

I'm pretty sure it excludes goalies from that number but yeah, it's a terrible rule hurting a lot of programs.

Hey GoldenHorshoe, how about instead of spamming every thread with the same  crap you read what the OP was asking for first. Can you not read that he is looking for a place less than 2 hours away??

The team is the 4th ranked '04 Tier 2 team in the country, outscored opponents 323-85 but they cheated all season? How'd they ever manage to win all those games away from the cheaters at the Mt. Lebo rink?

1 hour ago, Rippin Puckies said:

Time left on the clock is very debatable. It is based on an individual touch on the stop watch which proves even more how WRONG those parents were for taking the game away from KIDS. Although not starting the clock was the only way they were winning because they were down and losing the entire game. 

Parents in the box were ALL Mt. Lebanon fathers of players on that team. 

If parent doing the clock was a parent on the team playing in that game then that is wrong.  Leads to parent being too invested in the game to remember to start the clock or worse, purposely not starting it.  As I said, our organization would not even let parents do the clock/scoresheet if they had a player playing at that level (in other words, if you had a bantam age player, you couldn't do the clock for any bantam playoff game, you had to volunteer for a completely different age group).

Granted it's bad that the clock was not started right away but....there are 11.6 seconds on the clock at the start of this video and the goal was scored with 5 seconds left. Using a stopwatch, there are 5 seconds before the clock begins to run. So even if it had been started at the drop of the puck, there still would have been 1+ seconds left.